The Islamic Ottoman

Influence on the
Development of Religious
Toleration in Reformation
Transylvania
Susan Ritchie

Towards a Model of Enmeshment the capital of Buda and much of lower Hun-
When Sultan Suleyman of the Ottoman gary for his direct control while granting
Empire first learned of the birth of John Sigis- Isabella and her infant son Transylvania to
mund, the son of the King of Hungary, he felt rule independently but under the ultimate
it was such a fortuitous event that he sent an suzerainty of Turkey. After some years of politi-
equerry to stand in a corner of Queen Isabel- cal contrivance and redefinition, Transylvania
la’s room to witness her developed into its new
nursing the infant identity as a border state.
(Goodman, 1996, p. 86). An odd slice of semi-inde-
Sigismund’s father, King pendence between those
John Zapolya, King of areas directly controlled
Hungary and Voivode of by the Hapsburgs and the
Transylvania, had died Ottomans, Transylvania
just two weeks after his eventually became one of
son’s birth that July of the safest places in
aladar korosfoi-kriesch’s famous painting
1540. On his deathbed, Europe for the develop-
of francis david and the 1568 proclamation
he had given instructions ment of progressive seasons
of religious freedom at torda. copies of
that his son be named this sepia-colored photogravure Protestantism, including
heir to his titles, a viola- hang in most unitarian churches Unitarianism. In 1568,
tion of a previous and in many homes in transylvania. the now grown-up king
| spring – summer 2004 |

agreement that promised and newly minted Unitari-

Hungary after John’s death to Ferdinand, the an John Sigismund issued the Edict of Torda, a
brother of the Hapsburg emperor, Charles. document which historians have proclaimed
When it became clear after John’s death that to be the first European policy of expansive
his successors had no intention of allowing religious toleration (Cadzow, Ludanyi, and
Hungary to become a part of the Hapsburg Elteto, 1983).
empire, Ferdinand responded by laying siege Though this much is well known,
on Buda. In 1541, with Queen Isabella’s American Unitarian historians have long
forces nearing collapse, Sultan Suleyman been tantalized by the prospect of making a
appeared in Buda with a large army, success- more specific connection between the Islamic
fully repulsing Ferdinand. Suleyman claimed Ottoman rule and the development of 59
 IT IS NOW WIDELY RECOGNIZED THAT
THE CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM CULTURES
OF THE MEDITERRANEAN, WITH THEIR
EUROPEAN AND NEAR EASTERN
HINTERLANDS, WERE MORE IN CONTACT
IN THE MIDDLE AGES THAN HAD BEEN
ASSUMED BEFORE
Unitarianism in Transylvania, especially as
expressed in what has been described as its
“most striking and distinguished” achieve-
ment: the advocacy and practice of what
Wilbur named the most “perfect” principle of
toleration (Wilbur, 1952, 164-165). The Edict
of Torda was, of course, not exactly
perfect, extending toleration to only four
state-approved churches and not to other
Christian and non-Christian minorities. It was,
nonetheless, an impressive achievement; the
fact that the first modern principle of religious
toleration articulated by Europeans on the
level of state rule was articulated by Unitarians
under the ultimate political rule of religious-
tolerant Ottomans seems too strong and
obvious a connection to be mere coincidence.
Yet there has also been despair over the
possibility of ever finding direct evidence of
mutual relation and influence (Kratochvil,
1999). While everyone agrees as to the
presence of the Sultan’s equerries standing
quietly in the corners of Transylvanian history,
it has been harder to know their true
| spring – summer 2004 | seasons
influence.
In what follows, I would like to suggest that
uncovering the influence of Ottoman Islam
on Unitarian development is not as hard a task
as it has seemed. As much as it is sometimes
suggested, I believe that our inability to
demonstrate the vital connection between
Islam and Unitarian development is not
appropriately attributable to the deplorable
lack of 16th century Transylvanian govern-
mental documents, the resistance of the
contemporary Transylvanian church, or the
60 shortage of Unitarian historians able to access
documents written in both Hungarian and
Turkish.1 All these things comprise genuine
obstacles, but the most obvious evidences of
influence have been overlooked, I believe, as
a result of our application of an inadequate
paradigm of East-West influence. We have
imagined that the boundary between East and
West has been relatively impermeable, a
border crossed once at a time, by a few spec-
tacular individuals or ideas. Yet the border
between Europe and its “Others” is one that
has existed much more strongly in theory and
historiography than it ever has in cultural fact
or lived geography.
It is now widely recognized that the
Christian and Muslim cultures of the Mediter-
ranean, with their European and Near Eastern
hinterlands, were more in contact in the Mid-
dle Ages than had been assumed before, but
only recently have we begun to imagine the
results of extending a similar understanding
of cultural enmeshment to the early modern
period. Furthermore, in the case of the Middle
Ages, the recognition of mutual influence has
basically taken the form of acknowledging the
European debt to Arab learning, literature,
and material culture (Menocal). The textual
nature of such influence has lent itself well to
traditional scholarly methods for tracing influ-
ences and origins, especially to the historical
philology that remains the legacy of the first
European Orientalists (Said). However, such
methods are less helpful when the contact
between Christian and Muslim cultures is not
primarily textual but rather cultural and socio-
political, as it is in the early modern period.2
Hence, I would recommend the adoption
of the more flexible historical methodology
of historians Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton
for our purposes. Writing of the Renaissance,
Jardine and Brotton (2000) suggest that
Once it is recognized that … the bound-
aries between what we will refer to here
as the East and the West were thorough-
ly permeable in the Renaissance, …

even in situations of conflict, … fresh
possibilities for cultural cross fertiliza-
tion and two-way traffic open up at
every turn. With these possibilities and
their implications comes the inevitable
recognition that cultural histories
apparently distinct, and traditionally
kept entirely separate, are ripe to be
rewritten as shared East/West under-
takings. (8)
In what follows, I will attempt to rewrite
the story of the Edict of Torda’s proclama-
tion of religious toleration precisely as such a
shared Islamic-Unitarian undertaking, as the
result not only of influence but of cultural
enmeshment. In the process, I will make the
claim that there is indeed a direct relation-
ship between Ottoman rule that is based on
Islamic theological commitments and the
development of the Unitarian articulation of
religious tolerance. My goal in so suggesting
is less the clearing of this one historical trail
than it is the demonstration of a methodolo-
gy that might suggest how many of the
apparently blind trails within history indicate
not the absence of influence so much as
mutual influences so great as to become visi-
ble only in the intersections of previously
separate stories.
The Edict of Torda and the Anxiety of
Influence
Currently, when the story of the Edict of
Torda is told, it is most common to attribute
its expansive definition of religious tolerance
directly to the original and brilliant mind of
John Sigismund’s court preacher, Ferenc
Dávid. If cultural influence is admitted to at
all outside of this paradigm of original
genius, it is most often the Western influence
of classical humanism. Giorgio Biandrata,
the court physician to Sigismund and most
probably a member of the princely council
that authored the Edit of Torda, had, as is
well known, been a follower of Miguel
Servetus before his arrival in Transylvania and
is freely acknowledged for bringing to court
not only Servetus’s progressive Socinianism
(Unitarianism) but also the rich traditions of
Italian humanism. It is also quite standard to
note Queen Isabella’s familiarity with such
Western strains of thought; it is fairly well
known that when she left Buda to journey to
Transylvania, she carried with her a much
thumbed copy of Erasmus and that she subse-
quently insisted her son be educated in the
values of classical humanism (Varkonyi, 1993,
100). It is only reasonable to assume that
Dávid would have shared these influences.
However, any suggestion that the cultural
influences surrounding the edict might have
included those of the Ottoman East is still
rather hotly denied, most expressly by the
extant Transylvanian church and Hungarian
historians. Many of the most nationalistic
Rev. Dr. Susan Ritchie has served as
the minister of the North Unitarian
Universalist Congregation since
September of 1996. Rev. Ritchie was
ordained by First Unitarian
Universalist Church in Columbus
in May of 1995, where she subsequently served as the
congregation’s first (interim) associate minister. She
holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Ohio State
University and a Divinity degree from Methodist
Theological School in Ohio. Rev. Ritchie has pub-
seasons
lished widely on Unitarian Universalist history and
theology and on comparative religion. Collegium, the
Association of Liberal Religious Scholars, recently
honored her with its award for “Best New Scholarship
| spring – summer 2004 |
in Liberal Religious Studies.” The Journal of
Unitarian Universalist History published her
work, and one of her essays is currently being translat-
ed into Turkish for a collection of the best articles of
the last twenty-five years relating to Ottoman cultural
studies. Rev. Ritchie’s “The Promise of Post-mod-
ernism for Unitarian Universalist Theology” was
published by the Journal of Liberal Religion and
was also translated into Hungarian for publication
by the faculty of the Unitarian seminary in Clug,
Romania.
61

1 5 t h - 1 7 t h c e n t u ry t r a n s y lva n i a
Hungarian historians even reject what has
long been accepted elsewhere: that the
Reformation could never have developed and
matured in Hungary and Transylvania to the
extent that it did if it were not for the political
protection of the Ottoman Empire, which, at
the very least, protected the development of
various Protestantisms by significantly delay-
ing the arrival of the Counter Reformation to
the region. Most moderate international his-
torians accept not only that the political
protection of the Ottomans allowed for the
development of progressive Protestantisms
but also that the infamous permissiveness of
Ottoman administrative practice regarding
local customs and religions must have had
some influence with regards to the issue of tol-
eration. It has long been discussed, even in the
most traditional of sources, that, according to
| spring – summer 2004 | seasons
the Islamic tradition of respect for all People
of the Book, any monotheist who was willing
to accept the political right of the Ottomans
was given protection and legal right by and
within the Empire (Sugar, 1983, 5). But those
scholars who specialize in Ottoman culture go
even further, defining toleration as the chief
component of Ottoman identity. As one such
scholar has put it, “The Ottomans are perhaps
most unique for including and synthesizing
the cultural elements of the land through
which they passed. They are known for creat-
62 ing structures by which the people who had
lived there before could carry on their lives
and their beliefs in the way that they chose”
(Holbrook, 2003). Toleration, then, was a
matter of Ottoman policy and Ottoman
bureaucratic structure and an expression of
the Ottoman interpretation of Islam, which
was in most instances stunningly liberal and
cosmopolitan.
Yet the most celebrated sources on the
development of progressive Protestantism
usually handle the Ottoman influence on the
Unitarian development of toleration as, at
most, a matter of indirect political influence.
Williams’ Radical Reformation is an example
here. Williams acknowledges in a footnote
the possible impact of the Ottoman concern
with religious tolerance, yet his model of
influence is exclusively political, negative,
and unidirectional. He suggests, in other
words, that the Ottoman policy of religious
tolerance was simply a cynical political means
of preserving and developing such local divi-
sions as would enhance their own control
(1105). This is of course partially true; the
success of Ottoman domination was directly
connected to the famous Ottoman flexibility
towards local custom. And yet, there is more
to the story: the policy of tolerance was more
than a matter of military strategy, and it found
its expression not only in political structure
but in everyday cultural life.
Why, then, the resistance to this other
dimension of the story? We should not miss in
all of this anxiety over Eastern influence the lin-
gering effects of Hungarian nationalism. One
of the political results of the Reformation was a
certain identification of Hungarian patriotism
with liberal Protestantism, an association
which has motivated the representation in
some quarters of Unitarianism almost as a
national religion, as something sprung fresh
and whole from uniquely Hungarian soil.3 It
remains threatening, not only in a theological
but in an ethnic way, to credit the inspirations
of Unitarianism to the influence of the histori-
cal enemy and ethnic other. Indeed, because of
this political climate, those who have dared to
suggest a connection between Islam and
Unitarianism have done so only to discredit
Unitarianism as un-Hungarian. Alexander
Sándor Unghváry’s The Hungarian Protestant
Reformation in the Sixteenth Century under the
Ottoman Impact provides an especially remark-
able example of this. In an attempt to dismiss
Unitarianism as a form of Islam (and therefore
discount it as a Hungarian Protestantism),
Unghváry suggests that Ferenc Dávid based
the entirety of his religious conviction on the
copy of Servetus’s work given to him by Giorgio
Biandrata and that Servetus himself was actu-
ally more Islamic than Christian, quoting,
Unghváry claims, Mu^ammed with more rel-
ish and frequency than the Bible. Oddly, he
cites as his source for Servetus’s reliance on the
Qur’an a page in Wilbur that in fact praises
Servetus’s familiarity with and sophisticated
use of the Bible and which makes no mention
of the Qur’an. Unghváry also falsely claims
that Dávid’s education was at universities
“where Judaism and Islam then reigned
supreme” (Unghváry, 1989, 334; Wilbur,
1945, 45). Unghváry’s distortions make his
claims easy to dismiss, yet his work raises the
tantalizing possibility that it might be easier to
read for tracks of Unitarian-Islamic influence
in anti-Unitarian propaganda than it is in the
sympathetic histories. Servetus was, after all,
genuinely interested in Islam, perhaps Dávid
as well, and the connections that Unghváry
makes, while inaccurate and dismissive, are
not entirely untrue.
Indeed, the only other literature that has
consistently documented a connection
between Transylvanian Unitarianism and
Ottoman Islamic influence is that of the anti-
Socinian (Unitarian) movements of 17th and
18th century Europe. The French historian
Mathurin Veyssiére de la Croze, for example,
speaks in “Rèflexions historique et critiques
sur le mahométisme et sur le socinianisme”
(part of Dissertations historiques et critiques
sur divers sujets, 1707) of an explicit connec-
m i n a r e t s o f o t t o m a n h u n g a ry
tion between Islamic theology, particularly
the Qur’an, and the development of
Unitarianism in Transylvania, claiming that
the Transylvanian Unitarians themselves saw
a complete correspondence between their
non-Trinitarian theology and the unity of
God as taught in the Qur’an. Anti-Socinian
writers, such as de la Croze, were generally
writing out of the alarmed conviction that
Unitarianism might represent a stage towards
conversion to Islam, a belief partially inherit-
ed from the early days of the magisterial
reformation, when the spread of Islam was
seen as both an extension of anti-Trinitarian
heresies and as a consequence of divine wrath
over such apostasy. After all, none other than
Martin Luther himself had famously blamed
the spread of Islam on the Unitarians in exact- seasons
ly this fashion, writing that “Arius’s
punishment in hell becomes greater each day
as long as this error lasts. For Mohammed
| spring – summer 2004 |
came from this sect” (5:206). The ultimate
concern about Unitarians was more than a
concern with heresy: the ultimate worry was
also political, with many Europeans fearing
that Islamic-happy Unitarians might possibly
sympathize with Ottoman ambitions, a con-
cern that had more than an element of truth.
As much as these works distort and propa-
gandize, these Western European anti-
Socinians were not entirely incorrect in their
assessment of the Unitarian attraction to 63
 Ottoman political interests. In his Anti-Sociani- view against Leslie chose not to remind the
anisme (1656), for example, N. Chewney quite public of actual instances of Unitarian-Turkish
correctly cites Adam Neuser as case in point of a sympathies.
Unitarian whose theology led him not only to For their part, the 17th and 18th century
an attraction to Islam but to actually propose a European Socinians praised Islam as a pure
political alliance with the Ottomans. There is monotheism that had corrected many of the
also the colorful story of the British anti-Trini- theological corruptions that had befallen the
tarian Edward Elwall, preserved by no less a Christian church even as they repressed any
witness than Joseph Priestly. Elwall (1676- direct political connection to the Ottomans.
1744) saw so little difference between They tended to speak of Islam as a theological
Unitarianism and Islam ideal rather than as an
that he began to wear “a actual religion practiced by
Turkish Habit out of actual persons. In 1727,
respect to the Unitarian Andrew Ramsey spoke of
faith of the Mahometans” Socinianism approvingly as
(Champion, 1992, 177). the sublime religion which
And recently, there has stems from “Ideal Islam”
been some interest in recov- (Bastianensen, 1984, 21).
ering the history of the Henry Stubbe, John
London Unitarians, who, in Toland, Arthur Bury,
1682, intended to William Feke, and Stephen
approach the Moroccan Nye were similarly all
ambassador Mohammad Socinian authors who
ben Hadou with a letter strategically employed the-
(perhaps authored by Noel ological Islam as a means
Aubert de Verse) propos- of highlighting the devia-
ing a Unitarian-Ottoman tions from primitive
a n o t t o m a n t o m b i n bu da ( g u l ba ba )
alliance. The text of this Christian practice that they
bold letter suggests a plan for better Unitarian- found bothersome especially in the form of
izing Islam, suggesting that the remnant Anglican orthodoxy. Dealing with Islam on
“repugnancies” in the Qur’an could easily be this level of abstraction had a number of inter-
disregarded if the Muslims would only begin to esting results. It is J.A.I. Champion’s
read scripture in a historical and critical way, fascinating claim (1992) that we can find the
| spring – summer 2004 | seasons

just as the Unitarians had come to read the
Bible. It seems that the letter was never deliv-
ered, but it is interesting that the only trace of
its existence was preserved not by the Unitari-
ans but by the active anti-Socinian C. Leslie as
evidence of the political untrustworthiness of
liberal Christians, who serve, in his words, as
4
“scouts among us for Mohamet.” The letter
was the focus of intense anti-Socinian debate in
England in the 1690s, and Leslie published the
letter in 1708 as a part of his Socinian Controversy
Discussed. For obvious reasons, in such a cli-
64 mate, those defending the Socinian point of
origins of both civil religion and the history of
religion in the work of such authors as Stubbe
and Toland, particularly in their examination
of Islam as an ideal Abrahamic monotheism
and in their understanding of religion as pri-
marily serving social purpose. However, for
our purposes, what remains most fascinating
about these authors is their willingness to
describe the attractiveness of Islam in highly
theologized and idealized terms, even, howev-
er, as they are busy covering up and denying
instances of actual mutual influence. In this
light, returning to the setting of the Edict of
Torda, we might not be surprised to discover
that the strongest suggestions we have of
Unitarian and Islamic cultural enmeshment
lie not in Unitarian sources but in anti-
Islamic and, ultimately, anti-Unitarian
propaganda.
Rereading Torda for Cultural Enmeshment
If there was one form of anti-Islamic propagan-
da that dominated Hungary contemporary to
the Edict of Torda, it would be the lurid and
often quite popular accounts of alleged
Turkish atrocities in Eastern Europe that were
published throughout the 16th and early 17th
centuries. Most of these accounts were specifi-
cally intended to enflame ethnic hatred
against the Turks, and many were even explic-
itly written for the liberal Protestants who were
living in conditions of serious oppression in
the Hapsburg lands bordering Hungary, who
might, in their distress, have been tempted to
see the Ottomans as most tolerant friends
(Tihany, 1975). Their express point, then, was
to deny any mutual toleration between Turks
and Hungarians, but, as is so often the case,
such a denial of influence actually betrays a
considerable anxiety over the extent of a great
and actual influence.
Consider one story offered up in these nar-
ratives about a Lutheran minister, who, while
entertaining Turkish guests for dinner, was
supposedly tricked into replacing his hat with
a turban. In the somewhat illogical progress
of the story, the donning of the turban is con-
sidered as the sign of a full, even if forced,
conversion to Islam, subsequent to which his
guests force him to undergo an immediate
circumcision. This dinner-table operation is
all the more hideous, the text informs us, for
its supposed exclusion of the man forever
from Christian ministry.
It is not difficult to read such stories as origi-
nating in fear of losing ethnic identity
through conversion, assimilation, and the
increasing cultural enmeshment of the
“other,” especially when the stories take the
form, as they often do, of narrations of the
“execrable Turkish custom of seducing Christ-
ian women” with the nefarious aim of creating
hybrid children.5 Surprisingly, these incredi-
ble stories still make appearances in modern
Hungarian histories, more often than not
cited as evidence against the claim that
Ottoman rule was helpful to the development
of Protestantism (Tihany, 1975; Unghváry,
1989). But the irony is that in their eagerness
to demonstrate supposed religious intoler-
ance and generally beastly behavior on the
part of the Muslims, these accounts actually
preserve interesting evidence of considerable
cultural enmeshment: Turkish guests at
traditional dinners, Lutheran clergy convert-
ing to Islam, Turks and Hungarians marrying
and having children together, and Europeans
relocating to the heart of the Ottoman
Empire.6
Regarding marriage in particular, there is
considerable evidence of intermarriage in
16th and 17th century Hungary, both
between Turks and Hungarians and also
between the members of different religious
confessions. Early 16th century Hungarian
Reformed canon law devotes enough energy
to the prohibition of Islamic-Christian inter-
marriages to indicate the prevalence of the
practice, at least on the level of common law.
Meanwhile, the degree of intermarriage
between members of the different churches of seasons
Transylvania seems to have been great and,
interestingly enough, most likely predates the
Edict of Torda. Intermarriages were so accept-
| spring – summer 2004 |
ed by the late 16th century that it was simply
commonly accepted that sons would follow
the tradition of their fathers and daughters
that of their mothers. For example, the con-
temporary (early 17th century) historian
Kozma Petrityvity describes the rather compli-
cated religious mix of his family as not
unusual. His grandfather was Unitarian, his
grandmother Catholic; his mother was raised
Catholic, although many of her siblings
became Reformed; his mother then married a 65
 Unitarian, who raised his sons, including the
historian, to be Unitarians, while the daugh-
ters attended mass with their mother
(Murdock, 2000, 112).
Consider as well stories of the supposed
forced relocation of Christian Europeans by
the Ottomans. Just as with the stories of forced
conversions and marriages, we might learn to
read there mutual influence where we have
been asked to see only unidirectional oppres-
sion. It was an acknowledged Ottoman
practice to take some young boys from Eastern
Europe away from their homes and into the
heart of Ottoman power in order to educate
them for Ottoman administration, yet inter-
pretations of this practice have varied widely.
In some instances, knowledge of this
Ottoman practice seems to have allowed for
the rewriting of stories of actual voluntary
relocation on the part of Hungarian
Protestants into stories about capture and
force. Niyazi Berkes, in his study of Turkish
secularism (1964), has already pointed out
how Ibrahim Müteferrika was initially erro-
neously described in 18th century European
sources as a young Hungarian Calvinist study-
ing for the ministry, captured by the Turks
only to be enslaved by them and condemned
to a life of misery in Ottoman lands.
According to these same sources, this young
Hungarian was forced to convert to Islam and
take the name Ibrahim in order to escape slav-
ery. Now, we know that Ibrahim was in fact a
| spring – summer 2004 | seasons
young Unitarian raised in Kolozsvar, a man
whose anti-Trinitarian convictions attracted
him of his own free will towards Islam, and
someone who thrived rather than suffered in
the heart of the Ottoman Empire, eventually
establishing there the first modern printing
press in a Muslim land. One of his own books
published on his own press in 1710 had been
dismissed by 18th century historians as a pro-
Islamic tract, but in fact it is a far more
complicated and more Unitarian tome than
that. According to Berkes, Risale-I Islamiye was
66 not only the clear work of an anti-Trinitarian
Christian, it actually reflected the possibility
of an attraction to Islam on the part of
Ibrahim (whose Hungarian name is
unknown) predating his removal from
Transylvania. Berkes concludes, “If we go
back one century and trace the development
of religious and political conditions in
Transylvania, we shall not fail to appreciate
that neither Transylvanian Unitarianism nor
Ibrahim’s folk were unfamiliar with or too dis-
tant from Islam” (Berkes, 1964, 39).
In the traditional literature, we are also
told of M. Péter Pérenyi: he was a 16th century
Protestant Hungarian noble with a reputation
for the advocacy of religious tolerance who
“left” his son Ferenc “in Turkish hands as a
hostage, only himself to endure detention
some years later” after having been accused of
treason (Péter, 1996, 360). Upon further
investigation, this interesting man proved to
be an unorthodox Christian, neither unfamil-
iar with nor distant from Islam, a minor noble
who sought refuge with the Ottomans when
his early advocacy of religious tolerance made
him the target of his more orthodox neigh-
bors.
There were, of course, actual instances of
the capture of Eastern European boys, and
their actual presence was in Constantinople as
wards of the sultan—technically, as slaves. But
while these boys were technically slaves, it cre-
ates the wrong impression to leave the matter
there. They also received what many describe
as the best care and education available to
children anywhere in the world at that time
(Holbrook, 2003), and the desirability of
being so “captured” is also reflected in the
numerous instances of Turkish parents
attempting to disguise themselves as
Christians so that their children might be
afforded this honor. Indeed, the Ottomans
specifically groomed these and other
Europeans for positions of power within their
administration, finding it safer to place
Europeans in the Empire’s highest post than
Muslims who might belong to families with
rival dynastic claims to those of the Ottomans.
Given that the Hungarian boys raised as
Unitarians often did the best with their
Islamic educations, it is tempting to speculate
on the presence of these Hungarian Muslim-
Unitarians in the highest of Ottoman places.
We know that of the twenty-one Grand Viziers
most credited with Ottoman success (those
who directed the imperial administration
between 1453 and 1623), eleven are
described as South Slavs. As for the eight
viziers who constituted the royal Divan of
Sultan Suleyman himself, only two are
described as Moslems at birth, three being
Croatian, two Albanian, and one Hungarian.7
Unfortunately, it does seem that most textual
traces of voluntary Unitarian-Islamic conver-
sion might be lost. Ironically, evidence of
conversion has been denied not only by tradi-
tional European accounts seeking to mitigate
Ottoman power but also by those seeking to
retell the story of Islam without Western bias.
On a contemporary level, for example,
Edward Said’s Orientalism brilliantly demon-
strates the anti-Islamic prejudices of even
those Westerners who devoted their life to the
study of the Middle East. Yet one of the cases
that Said cites as evidence of the European
prejudice against Muslims is that of William
Whitson (1667-1752), the successor to Isaac
Newton’s science chair at Cambridge, a man
fascinated by Arabic Islamic manuscripts.
Whitson was indeed expelled from
Cambridge for heresy in 1710. Said suggests
this was a result of his affinity for Islam (1979,
76). Yet, actually, his reading of Islamic man-
uscripts converted Whitson not to Islam but
to Unitarianism, introducing him to the idea
that the doctrine of the trinity was not
preached directly by Christ. Indeed, after his
expulsion from Cambridge, Whitson went on
to write three explicitly Unitarian books
(Arberry, 1960, 34-35).8
It would appear, then, that the history of
Unitarian-Islamic mutual influence has been
erased from at least several directions.
Prepared, then, to find more cultural
enmeshment in our story than we might have
otherwise expected, let us return to telling the
tale of the Edict of Torda.
Restoring the Pasha to the Edict
It is my final assertion that the 1568 Edict of
Torda would have been unthinkable were it
not for the direct political influence of the
Ottoman example and the indirect cultural
influences that resulted from two cultures,
enmeshed in more ways that any textual evi-
dence alone will ever adequately reveal.
Here is an example of the direct influence
of Ottoman rule on the edict: on August 24,
1548, the Sultan’s representative in Buda was
requested by local authorities in Tolna to take
action against the Hungarian Protestant pas-
tor there, Imre Szigeti. Specifically, the
Catholic authorities in Tolna, offended by
Pastor Szigeti’s unapologetic and public advo-
cacy of reformed ideas, asked that he either
be killed or driven from the city for heresy.
The chief intendant of the Pasha of Buda not
only communicated to the authorities in
Tolna that the Pasha denied their request, he
also issued an edict of toleration which states
in part that “preachers of the faith invented
by Luther should be allowed to preach the
Gospel everywhere to everybody, whoever
wants to hear, freely and without fear, and
that all Hungarians and Slavs (who indeed seasons
wish to do so) should be able to listen to and
receive the word of God without any danger.
Because this is the true Christian faith and
| spring – summer 2004 |
religion.”9
The Pasha’s edict is not mentioned in any
of the Unitarian histories, yet it bears much in
common, in terms both of imagery and inten-
tion, with the later edicts of toleration to
come from John Sigismund’s court. We have
been taught that the radicalness of the 1568
Edict of Torda over previous tolerations lies
not merely in its extension of tolerance but in
its unique assertion of freedom of individual
conscience: “because faith is a gift of God; it 67
 springs from listening, which listening for-
wards the word of God” (Varkonyi, 1993,
106). Yet this 1548 edict by the Pasha of Buda
establishes an even earlier connection
between true faith and free listening.
While no direct textual trail exists, it is hard
to imagine that Dávid himself could have been
unfamiliar with the Pasha’s 1548 edict when
he laid the groundwork for the Edict of Torda
two decades later. Like Dávid, Imre Szigeti
had been a Hungarian student at Wittenberg,
and, indeed, the record we have of the Pasha’s
edict comes to us from a letter written by
Szigeti to his former classmate Matthias
Flacius, a man also known to Dávid. In 1548,
while Szigeti was serving the Lutheran church
in Tolna, Dávid was serving the Lutheran
church in Bistrita (Beszterce), placing him in
closer geographical range to Buda than
Szigeti. Recall also that the Magyar Lutherans
elected Francis David as their superintendent
in 1557, and the authority for the toleration of
the churches, which David administered,
would have emanated directly from this partic-
ular edict by the Pasha.
Moreover, the Pasha’s action corresponds
with what might be anticipated on the basis of
other more frequently recounted events. We
know, for example, that in 1574, in Lower
Hungary, two preachers championing the
Unitarian cause were persecuted for heresy by
local authorities under outdated, pre-tolera-
tion laws. Lukas Tolnai managed to escape,
| spring – summer 2004 | seasons
but George Alvinczi was put to death on order
of a church court presided over by the
Calvinist bishop. Influential Unitarians knew
to turn to the Pasha at Buda for assistance.
Eager to assist the Unitarians, the Pasha
declared the execution of Alvinczi “inhu-
mane” and ordered that the bishop and his
two fellow judges be killed. Only when the
Unitarian preacher at Pécs interceded, saying
that Unitarians did not want such dramatic
revenge, did the Pasha remit the sentence; in
lieu of it, a heavy annual tribute was imposed
68 on the entire locale (Wilbur, 1952, 84-85).
Additionally, we know that we have previously
underestimated the influence of the
Ottoman legal system on the development of
the Reformation. During the 1550s, 1560s,
and 1570s, the Protestants in Hungarian
lands, directly ruled by the Ottomans, man-
aged to hold their doctrinal debates with the
Catholics and issue their subsequent edicts
under the direction of a presiding Turkish
pasha or bey who assured the Protestant tri-
umph either through overt ruling or indirect
tampering (Tihany, 1975).
I would like to leave the story of direct influ-
ence there, for it would not do to have, once
again, the allure of a direct trail detract from
what I hope instead gradually begins to
emerge as a portrait of two cultures more
greatly enmeshed in patterns of creative con-
flict, mutual attraction, and circular patterns
of influence than we have imagined before.
There are of course, many pieces of the por-
trait yet to be assembled, but when we assemble
them, let us do so with an eye not towards
telling an ethnically distinct cultural history,
but with an eye towards the many ways in which
the borders between the Ottoman and
Hungarian cultures were in this period
crossed, renegotiated, and re-crossed. The
basis for the Edict of Torda was established not
only in Francis David’s mind, not only in Euro-
pean humanist influence, not even only
through the direct political and legal influ-
ence of the Ottoman Empire. The grounds for
religious toleration were also prepared for in
the everyday lives of actual persons, who expe-
rienced the negotiations of intermarriage
before any legal proclamation of toleration,
and who knew the attractions of Islam and the
safety it accorded progressive Protestants
before the publication of any theological
treatise.
What if we were to spin out the implica-
tions of toleration as a shared East-West
undertaking beyond Torda? It has been com-
monly asserted that John Locke’s even more
famous proclamation of religious tolerance

was undertaken in ignorance of the Edict of
Torda (Várkonyi, 1993). I’m not fully con-
vinced by this denial of influence—we know,
after all, that Locke read Unitarian literature
from Transylvania and that he met and con-
versed with Unitarians from Transylvania
prior to his articulations of the principle
of toleration. I am also aware that Locke’s
statement originated from a time marked by
more cultural crossings, more mutual
Unitarian-Islamic interests than is usually
acknowledged.10 Could it be that religious
toleration, supposedly that most precious
inheritance of the EuropeanEnlightenment,
has always been a shared creation? It is espe-
cially ironic that we celebrate the
progressive, diversity-promoting character of
the earliest European statements of religious
toleration, even as we describe them in ways
that erase Islamic influences. It is past time
for a more perfectly realized version of the
paradigm of shared understanding that is
now itself centuries old.
Notes
1
On the lack of governmental documents,
see Péter; on the denial of influence, see
Kratochvil.
2
For an account of how the assumptions of
philology work against an understanding of
Ottoman culture, in this case specifically
Ottoman literary culture, see Holbrook.
3
Unitarianism, for example, is often
referred to in the nationalistic literature as
being uniquely suited to the spirit of the
Hungarian people (Sisa, 1990, 86). While this
association occurs most frequently in the litera-
ture of Hungarian Unitarians, it is interesting
to note the degree to which many modern
American Unitarians maintain the connection.
4
“An Epistle Dedicatory to his Illustrious
Excellency Ameth Ben Ameth” was reprinted in
C. Leslie’s Theological Works after originally
being published in Socinian Controversy Discussed
(Champion, 1992, 111, 113). Accounts of it are
also found in Matar and Wilbur.
5
Both the quotation and the story about the
turban are from Paul Thuri-Farkas’ 1613 Idea
Christianorum Hungarorum. Farkas was a
Lutheran clergyman, a rector of the reformed
theological school in Tolna. His specific aim was
to stir up anti-Ottoman and pro-Habsburg senti-
ment amongst Protestants living in areas
controlled by the Habsburgs. (Tihany, 1975,
58).
6
The fascinating dynamic of “turning Turk”
is explored in Vitkus (2003).
7
Statistics from C.D. Darlington’s The
Evolution of Man and Society (NY, 1971), as cited
in Tihany, 1975, 382-383.
8
In fairness to Said, he does acknowledge
that “Access to Indian (Oriental) riches had
always to be made by first crossing Islamic
provinces and by withstanding the dangerous
effect of Islam as a system of quasi-Arian belief”
(76).
9
Tihany, 55. Tihany takes letter from Imre
Szigedi from Geza Kathona, Fejezetek a török
Hodoltsági reformáció történetéböl (Budapest,
1974).
10
Harrison and Laslett’s description of
Locke’s library certainly suggests that, given the
number of Unitarian and Socinian histories
owned by Locke, it as at least possible that he
had reading knowledge of the Edict of Torda.
Even more suggestively, though, when the
research by Harrison and Laslett and by
MacLachlan and Champion are combined, we seasons
realize that Locke would have personally met
Unitarians from Transylvania. We also know
that he read the Qur’an (Harrison and Laslett,
| spring – summer 2004 |
1971) and that the London of his time was far
more marked by Islamic influence than previ-
ously thought (Matar, 1994).
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